


Thunder in My Heart

by j_gabrielle



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Identity, M/M, Pining, Reincarnation, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 00:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8266436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_gabrielle/pseuds/j_gabrielle
Summary: He is seven and hears his first words of Korean, and immediately thinks, 'Ah, so this was what he was speaking.'





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what I am doing, but I hope you like this none the less.

He is seven and hears his first words of Korean, and immediately thinks, 'Ah, so this was what he was speaking.'

In this life, he is Thomas Roberts and the son of Maudie and Everett Roberts. He has two older brothers, an older sister and a younger sister who came around when he was ten. They have summer vacations in Florida and winters in Colorado, taking family photos annually for the Christmas cards. They live in a nice two story in a cul-de-sac in a good neighbourhood with people who have never been beyond the borders of the continental US of A.

And he hates it. Chaffs against the apple pie life and the normalcy of his childhood and his teens, and the flashes of another reality that he knows is as solid as this one but also flickers like the beat of a butterfly's wing. His parents leave him alone for most parts, choosing to focus their energies on his other siblings, and that was alright with him. He grows into his features. Never truly reconciling the weather beaten face that haunts his reflection like a ghost and the smooth unmarked skin that looks back at him. He bears it, keeps his nose clean and the day he hits eighteen, he fucks right out of town with a duffle bag of clothes and doesn't look back.

It is Sam who finds him first. He's tucked between two shelves in the library of a town he stopped in six months after he leaves, books piled around him about distant lands he has never been. And if he has been stuck on a travelogue on Seoul, no one is the wiser. "When?" Sam asks when they huddle into a booth of an all night diner when the library has shut its' doors for the night.

"Seven. Heard someone speaking Korean on the television." He replies.

"Eighteen. I held my baby sister in my arms for the first time in the hospital and I knew." Sam smirks. "My name in this life is Sam too. Would'ya believe that?"

"Parents called me Thomas. I never quite learnt to respond to that name."

Sam nods, playing with the salt shaker between his cupped palms, rolling it back and forth on the table. "Are they good people?" 

"The best. 'Tis a pity I couldn't be the son they needed or wanted." He looks away, "I never learnt to be Thomas, but I was never truly Goodnight either. I am both, and yet neither. They thought I was a bit of an oddball."

"I would too. Damn, kid. How are you still walking around?" Sam chuckles.

He swallows, leaning forward. "I'm feel like there is something I need to find. Like, something is still missing." Sam levels him with a look.

They sit in relative silence, interjecting the bubble around them with quiet offers of memories and experiences to supplement the bridge between their befores and afters. Sam is different and yet not. He sees him, as he was. That warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas. He smiles around the rim of his coffee mug at that thought. 

"I found Faraday, Vasquez, Red Harvest and Horne. Found Miss Emma, too."

"Yeah? How are they?" 

"Faraday's getting married. To Vasquez, of all people, can you believe it? Says that he remembered the other life on their second date. I'm surprised he's still breathing, to be honest. Red's a high schooler out in New York working in a music store. Has some set of skills on the guitar. Horne's a family man out in California running a surf shop. He's happy, they all are. We're planning on making a road trip out to Faraday's wedding, so best clear your schedule for that."

"Miss Emma?"

Sam leans back in his seat, grinning. Reaching into his coat, he takes out a polaroid photo and slides to over to him. "Meet Miss Emma. Born two weeks ago in Washington in vitro to her parents Lauren and Kelly Michaels."

"She's pretty. Are you..."

"Sure? Yeah. You can tell."

He takes another moment to look at the picture. "Yeah. You can."

It turns out that Sam has a family that he needed to get back to, so he tags along and crashes in their spare bedroom. Sam's wife doesn't question it, folding him into the fabric of their family life. It takes him all of two days before he is an honorary uncle to Sam's daughters. He stays with them for the rest of that first year, picking up work at the local hardware depo. 

It's early Spring when the urge to leave hits again. Sam doesn't say anything when he tells him, merely nodding at his words like he has expected it. Before he knows it he is standing at departures hugging the family when Sam slips him some cash. "For the road." And the words tangle and choke in his throat. Sam wraps him up in a bear hug, laughing. "If you see him, don't let him go this time."

He pulls away, wiping at his eyes. "We'll send you a postcard."

"You'd better."

They don't waste too much time on saying goodbye. Instead, he grins as he steps away to security, "What we lost in the fire..."

"We will find in the ashes." Sam salutes him.


	2. Chapter 2

He steps off the plane and into the Incheon airport rush with relief. He's never been a fan of flying and being in a metal death trap for almost fifteen hours borders on barely bearable. 

He gets more than a little lost, and it takes him a good three hours, but he gets to his homestay on the good graces of the people he meets. After thanking his host, getting his keys and closing his door at the earliest (polite) opportunity, he crashes almost immediately on the top of the covers. But the next day, he packs his camera and goes out. Sam had called him a fool when he told him what he planned to do, had shook his head and chuckled. But he'd gone to his study and taken an envelope from the drawer, passing it to him.

"I'll tell Faraday and Vasquez that you'll be bringing a plus one."

"What if he..."

Sam shakes his head, folding his arms. "If you were what you were to each other back then, he will. I know it."

He'd laughed it off then. But now, walking the streets of Seoul, looking but not seeing, he feels the anxiety creeping in the corners of his mind. What if this doesn't work? Sam had given him a ticket for a meet and greet later today, written instructions on how to get to the venue and an mp3 pre-loaded with 3 songs that he has been playing on repeat. Was this Billy's voice? Is he a singer? What sort of singer calls himself Shadow anyways? Arriving at the back of the line that stretches from the front of a shop that was painted a bright pink, he avoids eye contact with the people passing by and in line with him. Was he at the right place?

He can hear Sam's laughter in the back of his head.

In the hour and a half that he is there, he contemplates running. What are the odds that this would be him? What if Billy doesn't remember him at all? What if, the recognition he is so hoping for, does not happen? He sticks his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His heart is beating at his throat because soon enough, he is close enough to catch a glimpse of him.

But then, oh God. It is him.

Billy looks younger in this life. Different in a good way. The previous gauntness of his face is filled up, and he is clean shaven, dressed in a simple shirt. As if, with rebirth, they have changed everything anew. Billy is smiling at each person who gets to the table for an autograph and a picture, but he can tell that it is fake. Each step he takes closer to the table, it gets harder and harder to breathe with the waterfall of new memories; the knowledge of a real smile on that face, the way his lips part in sleep, the way his eyes crinkle in quiet amusement. All the things he once knew but forgot, coming back.

Closer now, and he realises that he doesn't have anything that would justify him coming to this event. He digs through his bag, catching on his journal and the fourth thing that was in Sam's envelope. One of the attendants notices him and politely tells him that he only has a few minutes with Billy before he will be asked to move along. He doesn't trust himself to speak, so he nods.

"Who should I make it out to?" Billy glances up at him briefly before looking back down. 

"Goody." He says, sliding the antique silver hairpin over to Billy. "I will always come back for you."

If the recognition happens, Goody can't tell. Billy smiles like nothing is wrong, snapping his journal shut and handing it back to him. "Thank you for coming." He says, turning to the person behind him.

It takes all he has to leave.

He should have known that this was a mistake. Billy obviously has made a life for himself here. What did he expect would happen? Billy would remember and then they would skip out into the sunset hand in hand? Maybe, a little voice in his mind whispers, you were hoping he could fill the emptiness in you.

Goody lets his feet take him to a nearby cafe. Ordering a coffee, he sits by the window, contemplating. He should really call Sam and let him know how it went. He is flipping through his journal for Sam's number when he flips to the page he had offered for Billy's autograph.

_To Goody._

_I always knew you'd come back to me._

_Billy._

_p.s. I have that godforsaken flask_

Underneath it is an address and what seems to be a keycode, to which Goody huffs a breath caught between a laugh and incredulity. Running his thumb over the ink, he smirks. Bastard still wrote the same.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Maybe there will be another part after this.


	3. Chapter 3

It's this really fancy place that he has only ever seen on tv when his mother leaves it on as background noise. Goody gets through the lobby with minimal fuss, only having to avoid the eyes of doorman as he makes his way to the lift.

Keying in the numbers Billy left for him, he lets himself into a spacious but sparsely furnished apartment, remembering only belatedly that it is custom here to leave your shoes at the door. It has all the touch of exquisite tastes, but as he looks around, he does not see a trace of Billy anywhere in the place. 

He's figuring out the remote for the television when the front door keypad beeps. 

Billy stands at the door, watching him. After an eternity of weighted silence, Goody smirks, "So who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?"

"Idiot." Comes Billy's reply, but it seems the tension has been broken. "Have you eaten?"

"No."

"Okay. 

Goody follows him to the pristine kitchen, takes a seat at the island. Billy moves through the space with ease. He methodically starts taking out the pot, bowls and packets of ramen. From the refrigerator, he takes out some bok choy and supermarket beef. Pouring out two glasses of water, he holds one out to Goody.

"I hope you're not allergic to anything." Billy asks.

"Not that I know of." Goody shrugs, accepting the glass that is offered to him. "Billy..."

"Chang-yi. Park Chang-yi. That's my name. In this lifetime, at least." Goody carefully looks at him over the rim of his glass. He still looks like Billy, so there's that at least. But he looks lighter, free. His eyes are devoid of their shadows and the line of his shoulder doesn't look as tense as Goody had remembered once in a sun hazed dream. 

"Chang-yi." He rolls the syllables on his tongue, testing them, "Chang-yi."

"What about yours? You had a name once. What is it now?" Billy begins rolling up his sleeves, shedding his coat.

"Thomas Roberts. But I never really felt like it was mine, you know?" He offers. Cupping the glass of water between his hands, he huffs a breath. Quietly, he says, "I thought I would never find you."

Billy smirks at that. "I had no such worry. I'd always known you would come for me. Wherever you go, I go, right?"

"Ha. Right." Goody taps his fingers in a tuneless rhythm against the glass. "How much did you remember? Of that time?"

Billy puts some water to boil in the pot, setting to slicing up the beef and vegetables. "I remembered more as a child. A lot faded as I grew older. I remembered you, of course. That dusty town we died in."

"And us?" The words tumble forth before Goody can stop them. He is gripping the glass tightly enough to break.

Billy's hands do not falter as they prepare their meal. "That too. I remembered it. At first, couldn't understand why of all people a white man would appear in my dreams and why my heart would be so full to bursting at the sight of him. I could never understand how I was so good with my English, or how sports was always so easy for me. I could never understand why I cried watching westerns. But then I remembered."

Goody remains quiet, watching him. There is a lifetime of ticks that he does not recognise. The person in front of him is simultaneously a stranger and familiar to him. And in many ways, that is true.

Billy slides in the ramen noodles the moment the water begins to boil. Along with it, he adds thin slivers of meat. "I became a singer. I'm halfway decent. Have you heard me sing?"

"Yeah. Yours is really not my style." He grins.

"Good to know." Billy responds with a smile of his own tweaking at the corner of his lips.

Goody allows the comfortable silence grow for a moment. "I kept seeing ghosts of you. In everything. There was a 'you' shaped hole in me that I could never fill." 

"And now?"

Goody waits until Billy has added the bok choy into the pot before answering, "I'm still deciding."

And it was the truth. Though there were more than enough parts in him that screamed out that this here, being with Billy here, is home and hearth, he cannot help the wariness that has crept up at how Billy has separated himself so cleanly between his identities.

Billy begins to scoop out the noodles, dividing out the portions between two bowls. Garnishing them with the spring onions, he slides one over to Goody. "Eat."

"And then after?"

"We can talk. After."

Goody accepts that. They eat in the quiet, each focused on their respective bowls. Once done, Billy takes his empty bowl from him, piling it into the sink.

"Faraday and Vasquez are getting married. Sam told me to bring you." 

Billy goes still, the first viscerally human emotion he has seen on him from the man. "They got their heads out of their asses long enough, huh?"

"According to Sam, apparently so." He grins, wry. "They're planning to have a little reunion of sorts at the wedding." The unspoken 'Come with me' hangs heavy in the air.

It takes Billy a good moment before he turns off the tap. Wiping his hands down, he turns. "Thomas..."

"Goody. Goodnight. You called me that once." Goody says. Billy flinches, looking pained.

"I know. I died with your name on my lips." He whispered, turning with his back to Goody. "I can't."

Goody stands. "Can't what."

"I _can't_. I have a life here. Thom- _Goody._ I can't just leave! I can't just walk away and be 'him' again because I am not." Pushing himself off the sink's edge, Billy folds his arms, the discomfort clear. "I really am not. I've built a life for me, I have something good. Goody..."

"Then, tell me this. What did you feel when you saw me today?" Goody waits until Billy is looking back at him.

"I don't know, Goody. I really don't know." Billy whispers, brown eyes full and bright.

Goody nods, grabbing his coat and shrugging it on. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a pen. Grabbing a piece of paper, he scribbles down the venue, time and date of Faraday and Vasquez's wedding. "In case you ever figure out how you feel."

Turning around, he leaves. He doesn't bother putting on his shoes until he is in the lift, doesn't bother with tears until he is safe in the privacy of his room.

* * *

"So you ran."

He punches Sam in the arm. "I did not."

"Yeah, you did." Sam chuckles, taking a sip from the sixth (or was it eighth) hipster moonshine Vasquez insisted on serving at the wedding, and therefore has seen fit to drag Goody, Sam, and Horne (who rocked up in a shirt emblazoned with a bear claw on it) to the distillery for a last minute tasting. "You can't force him to accept this, to change everything he has come to accept as fundamentally 'him' overnight. It just isn't fair, and it doesn't work like that."

Goody snorts. "For a drunk, you sure talk some long and complicated shit."

Sam lifts his glass in a toast, draining it of the remaining liquid before grimacing. "Ugh. I think I had about enough."

Goody nods in agreement as he does the same to his. It is probably a bad idea to be drinking when they're going to the airport later to pick up Red. Horne is talking to the manager about flavours, while Vasquez is talking in hushed voices into his phone. "What do you think he is stressing about?"

Sam's eyebrows rise to his hairline, the glint of his wedding ring catching the light. "Dunno. Probably Faraday trying to incorporate superheroes into the wedding again."

"Does he realise that Vasquez has literally made a freaking superhero cake just for him?" Goody pours himself another glass of the third (or was it sixth) bottle they tried. "I like this one."

Sam throws his head, laughing. "Yeah, well. I think Vasquez has already settled for," Squinting at the array of empty bottles in front of them, "one of these. Probably."

Goody finds himself giggling at that. "Probably."

Horne comes to loom over them. "Alright boys. Let's get you back to the hotel, shall we?" He says, before hauling them to the car.

The wedding weekend comes sooner than he'd like, and he spends the better part of the ceremony looking out at the crowds, searchingthe church pews for a face. Sam has to still him with a sharp look, with Horne chuckling into his fist and Red rolling his eyes at them.

It goes off with minimal glitches. Grandma Vasquez glares at anyone who dares to even breathe wrong, the priest stumbles a little (but that's okay), Faraday wore the wrong tie (mint green that clashed with his boutonnière) and despite one of the flowergirls bursting into tears as she walked down the aisle, everything was perfect.

Then it's just them, in the quiet of a side room after the ceremony. Goody looks at Faraday and Vasquez, at how they can't seem to look away from each other and thinks on how it has taken them two lifetimes to love each other like this. Faraday has an arm around Vasquez's waist, wiping off a smudge of lipstick at his cheek from one of their more enthusiastic aunts, while Vasquez is laughing softly at something or another. They probably have a good five minutes before relatives burst through the doors and demand their one million pictures with the happy couple, and while he had fully expected himself to feel bitter about it, he can only feel happiness bright and warm in him.

"I'd like to propose a toast. To the happy couple." Sam says, holding up a glass of champagne as one finds their way to each of their hands. Horne sees Red reaching out for his and snatches it before he can get his hands on it, replacing it with some sparkling water instead.

"To the happy couple." They all chorus. Red rolls his eyes even as he takes a drink from his water.

And on cue, Faraday and Vasquez are whisked off in a waft of pastel suits and cloying perfume. They don't see them till the dinner where Faraday gets a little choked up about the superhero cake that gets rolled out, and Vasquez perhaps gets a little teary eyed when he hears his husband's speech. But that all pales and fades into the background when Vasquez takes the stage midway through the night and announces that they have a special guest. All the way from Korea.

The sneaky Mexican bastard.

Then, Billy is there with a guitar, the string lights all a-glow around him and Sam's nudging him towards the stage. Utterly incapable of looking away. Billy is singing this Italian love song, voice like smooth silk as he plucks away. 

When the last note holds and thrills away, Goody is still utterly incapable of looking away. There is a rousing applause as the band resumes their positions and begins to play the next song. Goody still has his eyes fixed on Billy as he climbs off the stage, coming to stand right before him.

"I've figured it out." Billy says, grinning, "How I feel."

"Yeah? And?" Goody replies around the lump forming in his throat.

Billy reaches into his jacket, pulling out a polished silver flask. "I'm afraid. I can still remember how it felt back then, dying in that tower. I can still remember how it felt to die with your name on my lips, Goody."

"And?" Goody folds his hand over the flask and over Billy's.

"I'm still afraid. Afraid of what this could mean." Billy says, brown eyes bright, "But more than that, I am afraid to lose you again."

"And."

Billy takes a step forward, running his free hand into Goody's hair. "More than fear, I am afraid of a life without you. Because... Wherever you go-"

"I go, too." Goody smiles, mimicking the way Billy's hand is cradling him. "Billy."

"Goody."

As he tilts his head, pressing their lips together, he is dimly aware of Vasquez leading the others in hooting and cheering. But oh, Billy does that thing with the stuttering of his breath, and he is thrown back to nights sleeping out under the stars where they'd done this until they fell asleep. The bastard is smiling against his lips that clues him in that he probably pulled that trick on purpose just to fuck with him.

And damn, if it isn't like coming home. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is interested, the song that Billy is singing is Che Vuole Questa Musica Stasera by Peppino Gagliardi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDcvhkRuOc) If this song sounds familiar, it's that song from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 
> 
> So that's it everyone! I hope you enjoyed it. I might add an epilogue, but for now, this is it. Thanks for reading and for taking the time to kudos and to leave all those sweet comments. <3


End file.
